


trilby found her voice (she doesn't need svengali)

by skatingsplits



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Actors, Ex Sex, Exhibitionism, F/M, Hate Sex, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Sexism, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29133528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatingsplits/pseuds/skatingsplits
Summary: If this were a movie, Zelda would look just above the lens, press the fingertips of a trembling hand to her chest and let her voice quiver just a little as she spoke about the man who broke her heart. But life isn't a movie;  Faustus Blackwood may have gotten his talented hands over every other inch of her body, but they never came anywhere near her heart.
Relationships: Faustus Blackwood/Zelda Spellman
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	trilby found her voice (she doesn't need svengali)

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The title is taken from "I've Got It All", from the Comden & Green musical On The Twentieth Century. The relationship between the two central characters in On The Twentieth Century (as well as the stage version of Kiss Me Kate) was a huge inspiration for this story.  
> 2\. So, full disclosure that I still haven't seen Part 4 of CAOS. However, I have been very thoroughly spoilered, and the meta/behind the scenes episode was very vaguely the jumping off point for this; it turned into something very different along the way, as my fics are wont to do.  
> 3\. This fic is set primarily in the early 1950s and the characters have attitudes that reflect that, Zelda included. This largely takes the form of a lot of internalised misogyny, and blatantly external misogyny too, but if anything else comes up I'll pop it in the tags.

_"You **are** in a beehive, pal. Didn't you know? We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey night and day."- _All About Eve (1950), Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

**February 14th, 1952**

Zelda Spellman isn't nervous. She's cold, that's for sure. The February wind is biting at her neck like a clumsily enthusiastic lover and the fox fur round her shoulders isn't doing much to keep it out. She's drunk, the taste of gin still lingering in her mouth from the doubles she'd hastily poured down her throat in the hotel room, but that was long enough ago that she's coming all the way back round to merely tipsy. She's exhausted, barely winning her race against jetlag. Christ, she's even a little anxious about someone trying to sell a story on an obviously tight Oscar-winning actress spending her Thursday night pacing up and down the same twenty metres of East 61st Street on increasingly wobbly high heels. But nervous? As she's told herself dozens of times today, more times than she'll admit to having blown out the candles on a birthday cake, there's no reason to be nervous. All she's doing is having dinner with the man who... well. If this were a movie, Zelda would look just above the lens, press the fingertips of a trembling hand to her chest and let her voice quiver just a little as she spoke about the man who broke her heart. But life isn't a movie; Faustus Blackwood may have gotten his talented hands over every other inch of her body, but they never came anywhere near her heart. 

Not that that's going to make it any easier for Zelda to sit across a table from him and make polite conversation. Or at least, as close to polite conversation as she can manage. She loathes small talk at the best of times; bland, meaningless drivel has never been her forte. But bland, meaningless drivel drifting between two people who are doing a terrible job of pretending they aren't intimately acquainted with the deepest recesses of each other's psyches... Zelda has been sure for a very long time that if hell exists, she's headed straight for it. She just hadn't realised she'd get there before she even kicked the bucket.

Maybe things wouldn't seem so bad if she hadn't left her cigarette case in the back of the cab. Or maybe if it wasn't fucking Valentine’s Day, and Manhattan wasn't full to the brim of sickening sweethearts, clutching and cooing and pawing at each other. All pretending that they aren't just using each other to get their rocks off and wait out the clock until one of them croaks and the other can collect their life insurance. Well, Zelda isn't fooled. Not by the saccharine masses, and not by her traitor of a brother who'd insisted he'd forgotten all about the holiday when he'd set up this meeting. Bastard.

If she didn't know any better, Zelda might have suspected that this was a misguided but well-intentioned attempt at a set-up; ex-lovers dining alone together on Valentine's Day, tension bubbling up before they’re thrown together for endless weeks on set. And if anyone other than Edward had arranged it, maybe it would have been. In reality, however... Edward might introduce himself at dinner parties as her brother-slash-producer, but they both know which side of his dual role takes priority and this would hardly be the first time he's tried to whore her out for the sake of a picture. Oh, he isn't opposed to giving her special treatment, letting her choose her costumes and chivvy the script girls, but even the longest leash only lets you go so far before your master yanks you back by the throat. And when Zelda had said no to making this movie, to this role her brother had cherry-picked especially for her... she’d known it wouldn't be long before she felt that leash tightening. Never mind how often she’d told him she'd rather gouge her eyes out than ever work with Faustus again. Saying no simply wasn't an option. It never has been. She doesn't know why she thought this time would be any different.

And now her beloved brother is rubbing salt right into the open, gaping wound. He'd told her that Faustus had insisted on this dinner, so insulted by her initial refusal that she'd have to patch things up in person. Zelda will believe that when Beverley fucking Hills freezes over. The man had barely wanted to have dinner with her when they were actually fucking, for God's sake, it's highly unlikely that he's dying to spend a stilted, sexless evening together now. This plan is all Edward, down to its spiteful little core. He'd probably even guessed that she'd end up lingering on a street corner, the human embodiment of the midway point between a desperate working girl and a lonely old tramp. Then again, maybe this part of the evening's ritual humiliation is down to her and her sudden lack of anything resembling a backbone. As tempting as it is to do so, she can't blame Edward for everything.

There's a gaggle of civilians staring at her now and although Zelda can't actually hear them, the little voice who lives at the back of her head and speaks in the Connecticut-clipped tones of her mother is convinced that they're laughing. Why wouldn't they be? And, as much as she loathes it, it's that little voice that finally strengthens Zelda’s resolve. Whatever torture Faustus Blackwood might put her through, it'll be nothing compared to waking up tomorrow morning to find that Louella Parsons has devoted two column inches to the tip-off she's had on Zelda Spellman's drinking problem. 

When she pours herself into the back seat of a different taxi two hours later, Zelda can't quite remember what she'd been expecting. An evening populated with sly insults and vicious little quips, perhaps; Faustus has always been as bitchy as a spiteful chorus girl who lost out on a solo, and her younger self had been stupid enough to let him see a chink or two in her well-constructed armour. Or maybe that he’d have his hand sliding up her thigh before they even saw the wine list because if she's scrupulously honest with herself, there isn't a chance in hell she would have stopped him. That particular aspect of their not-quite-relationship had been the only part that wasn't an absolute trainwreck and if she'd had a choice between an evening of conversation and an evening of writhing on Faustus's lap, well. Despite multiple articles in Photoplay speculating the opposite, Zelda is only human.

But none of that had happened, not even close. Instead, all he'd given her was... nothing. Nothing. Not one barbed comment about her age or her figure, no light brush of his hand against her ribcage or lingering look that lasted a moment too long for him to feign innocence. A passerby could have easily assumed they were strangers. An Amish passerby who never read Variety, maybe, but even so. Fighting and fucking were the only things they were ever good at, and tonight Faustus denied her the opportunity to indulge in either one. The entire time, he sat there polite and passive, as if he wasn't the man who’d buried his face between her thighs in her dressing room at the Belasco for so long she'd missed her cue for the second act of The Duchess of Malfi.

Although she'd beat herself to death with her own Oscar before she ever admitted it, Zelda can remember conversations she had with Faustus Blackwood twenty years ago in embarrassingly minute detail. But mere minutes have passed since she left the Colony and she'd already be hard-pressed to repeat a single thing the man said.

_It’s a pleasure to see you, Miss Spellman._

_May I say how much I enjoyed your last picture?_

_The lobster salad here is excellent, you must try it._

_I hope your sister is well._

_Oh, you've been in London? No, I haven't managed a trip home for quite some time._

Zelda doesn't realise she's scratching at the upholstery until the chauffeur gives a very pointed cough. With the dramatic roll of her eyes that made her famous, she stops, but she isn't sorry. She only wishes the leather beneath her fingernails was Faustus’s face.   
If she were a little younger and a little less jaded, Zelda might have convinced herself that it had been deliberate, an attempt to rile her up, stir up the passion he's always been able to provoke in her. Now though? At the very least, she isn't sure. It's difficult to be sure about anything when all the water in your body has turned to Tanqueray.

There are, however, two things that Zelda knows for certain. The first is that, despite all of her previous protestations, there's not a chance in hell that she isn't making this movie. The second is that it’s going to be the finest performance she's ever given, maybe the finest performance anyone has ever given (although she is willing to admit that that might be the gin talking). Faustus Blackwood isn't going to know what's hit him- and if he ever looks at her like she's the least interesting enclosure in the zoo again, what's hit him will be Zelda, a curling iron and all the brute force a vengeful woman can muster. 


End file.
